


The Second Step

by CateWolfe



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Escape from Angband, First Age, Gen, The Logistics of Winter, Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CateWolfe/pseuds/CateWolfe
Summary: The fire's smoke did not have the distinctive thick darkness of the smoke that rose from orcish fires. But nothing made its way north through the mountain pass without being seen by the folk of Himring, and he had not been told of travelers in the area for months.A snapshot of the journey of an elf out of Angband. Written for Mavariel, for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & OC(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	The Second Step

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [TRSB Piece 113, Maedhros comforting a former thrall](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/676381) by Mavariel. 



The sky was always clear in the last cold week of autumn.

Maedhros walked more slowly than usual along Himring’s outer walls, savoring the air, though the cold wind was already growing bitter. Soon the fortress would be surrounded with snowdrifts twice the height of an elf, and Himring would be cut off from all the southern realms until spring.

He was on the north wall now, and looked northward across the plain. From this vantage point he could see only the outermost part of Morgoth’s domain; the foothills of the Ered Gorgoroth blocked the remainder from his view. A few small deer stood alongside a little stream, grazing on what little green grass remained on its banks, but all was otherwise still.

Despite the current peace, Morgoth’s forces had been sending out regular raiding-bands of orcs toward Himring for the past few months. Now Maedhros suspected they were gathering their strength for a stronger attack. Whenever they dared to emerge from their deep tunnels, some scouting parties would have to be sent out to break them up―  
  
Something was different about the mountains today. He stopped in his tracks and focused his eyes on the aberration. It seemed to be a dozen yards to the right of the Ered Gorgoroth’s central peak, rising in little grey wisps, moving with the wind, and at last disappearing. Smoke, then. Not much at all, really— it must have been from a single small fire.  
  
The smoke did not have the distinctive thick darkness of the smoke that rose from orcish fires. But nothing made its way through the mountain pass without being seen by the folk of Himring, and he had not been told of travelers in the area for months. Even if the fire had not been lit by orcs, its tender was very unlikely to be friendly. At once Maedhros turned to go down into the fortress, stopping by the armory to retrieve and put on his light traveling armor, then making his way to the stables.  
  
“Bring out Hiswalimben, please,” he asked the stablekeeper. She was the smaller of his two horses, but she was swift, and hardy enough to survive the harsh northern winter.  
  
The stablekeeper made no comment, only bringing out his horse as soon as she could be prepared for riding. The guards also stood silent at the gate, knowing that he often went out alone, save for one of the oldest among them who quietly wished him well.  
  
Out of the gate he rode. Himring’s gate faced the west, for the curling ends of the mountains made for a natural chokepoint. Were the fortress to ever be seriously assailed from the north, the enemy forces would have to make their way around all four walls at the mercy of the archers before even attempting to breach the gate, or else they would have to somehow scale the walls.  
  
But the latter circumstance was very unlikely. No ladder or talon could hope to find purchase on Himring’s walls, which were tall, strong, and smooth as a mountain’s, the outermost layer of stone so tightly fitted that even a single hair could not be forced into the loosest seam. The gate was likewise well-wrought from dense, ancient wood, which was covered and bound with steel. Its hinges, and the long stakes that attached them to the stone walls, were chiefly made of steel but had a core of mithril. In time of need, a dense lattice, also of steel, could be fitted behind the gate to reinforce it, but that had not been needed for some dozens of years.  
  
Although the placement of the gate made a great amount of tactical sense, it made for a marked inconvenience any time Maedhros needed to ride north. Along the narrow, sloping ramp from the gate to the ground he rode. Some grey-green shrubs had begun to grow along the base of the ramp. If winter did not kill them, they would have to be uprooted before their roots broke into Himring’s foundations.  
  
At last he reached the end of the ramp. He was north of the Ered Gorgoroth now, and could see the tall plume of smoke plainly against the pale sky. But for the hills he would have been able to see straight to its source.  
  
Toward the smoke he rode, although he took a slightly circuitous route, keeping to the low places between hills that he might not be easily seen.  
  
Before the sun had sailed much farther he rounded a hill quite close to the mountains and saw the small fire near another hill, much more angular than were the others in the region. The grass and shrubs around it had been cleared away properly, and some attempt had been made at hiding it from view beneath an overhang. The wood must have been gathered from the mountain forest some distance away.  
  
Maedhros dismounted, and walked slowly nearer to the fire. As he walked he began to see that something had been built beneath the hill. It had been hollowed out like a cave from the tallest side downward, and fortified crudely in the orcish style, all poorly mortared rocks and burred, sulfuric iron. It was quite overgrown, and it would have seemed to be abandoned but for the fire burning near its entrance.  
  
The wind shifted, and the fire flared up. Within the little orcish shelter lay a small grey lump, almost seeming to move in the firelight.  
  
It was moving. The shape was that of either an elf or an orc, and lay huddled on the cold ground, breathing.  
  
Slowly and silently, Maedhros drew closer to the cave’s entrance. Although he kept his hand on his sword, he had determined to wait, and to watch whatever lived within the cave. It would be an oversight to allow an orc to escape, and return to bolster Morgoth’s forces, and yet it would be more shameful still to abandon an escaped elf without any aid.  
  
At last he reached the cave’s entrance. To the side of it he stood, as still as a stone, watching and listening for any clue as to what slept in the darkness.

  
Eirien was cold.  
  
Her fire had died down since she had built it, and no longer warmed the cave. The dirt beneath her, although not wet, had been packed hard and solid by regular use, and it sapped all the warmth from her limbs. Her head she had managed to prop up with a small pile of leaves, pulled off the shrubs outside, but this was only slightly better than the ground.  
  
She might have left the cave to sleep next to the fire, but did not dare to; even if an orc did not stumble across her a mountain bear surely would.  
  
She curled up more tightly, hoping that some of the warmth from her heart and her stomach might go to her fingers and toes, and thus not be utterly wasted. But she had forgotten her large, fresh bruises; as she shifted, the hard edge of a wrist shackle pressed into one of the worst. She pressed her lips together from long habit, breathing in and out at steady, deliberate intervals. There was no one here to notice if she cried out, or if the air hissed more loudly than usual through her teeth, but it was the only way she had ever known.  
  
As she gingerly tried to return to her original position, she heard a faint sound from outside her hiding place. It was a low, pained sound, like the noise her father had made when she dropped a crate of coal on her first excursion into the mines.  
  
It did not sound at all like a sound that an animal might make.  
  
Eirien managed to stumble to her feet, sacrificing some degree of silence for speed. Kind though the sound had seemed, she could not imagine that any would dare venture into these lands save the servants of the Enemy.  
  
Each of her breaths seemed to come sooner than the last, and the sound of her blood in her ears drowned out even the sound of the strong, swift wind in the sage. She had no way to fight whoever had been sent to retake her. Perhaps she might have been able to beat a small orc, if she devised a way to use her shackles as weapons, but a small orc would not have been clever enough to wait unseen outside the entryway, nor would it have a voice that sounded so similar to an elf’s.  
  
No, this must have been one of the Enemy’s shape-changers. Eirien shuddered, hoping that it was one of the weaker ones. She had heard every tale of the terrible punishments devised by the Enemy’s most honored servants― even death could not be trusted as a release, for it was whispered that he had the power to keep a spirit within its body far beyond its natural ability to withstand the pains of Arda. An underling would not dare to ask anything so grand.  
  
She was not at all resigned to her fate, but with every moment she waited her knees shook more. If she waited any longer she might have fallen over, and that would be too undignified to bear. She raised her hands in what she thought might be a fighter’s stance, hoping against hope to land one blow on her would-be captor before the end.  
  
“Come in and get it over with,” she tried to shout, but her voice quivered dreadfully, and before she had finished the last word she broke down coughing from the dryness of her throat.  
  
All the light went out of the cave. The shape-changer stood in the entrance to the cave. Eirien did not dare to look up, all her hope of courage forgotten. She shut her eyes tight, still coughing, and pulled her tightly clenched fists close to her body. A little piece of broken chain slipped off of one wrist shackle and clattered to the ground. Its high-pitched sound echoed agonizingly in the cave, as Eirien stood, her knees knocking together from cold and fear.  
  
“Do you need water?” asked the shape-changer, quite softly, though there was a subtle rasp to his voice.  
  
Eirien blinked. “No!” she said, and then, “You’ve put something in it, I’m sure. Just kill me the honest way and be done with it.”  
  
“I am not going to kill you,” said the shape-changer. He was far too quiet to be one of the dull, weak ones, and yet his voice filled the cave in a way that louder voices could not. It seemed to hang in the air, echoing within Eirien’s head long after it had ceased to echo in the cave.  
  
Eirien believed him. The shape-changers who could imitate elves as accurately as this one could never bothered to kill their captives. The elves who had witnessed their displeasure spoke of far more creative torments. The best fate she could hope for now was to keep some fragment of her true self until the shape-changer found something new to occupy his time and she was sent back to the mines.  
  
“I will not kill you,” he repeated. “Nor will I harm you.”  
  
Eirien did not believe that. She had gotten her feet squarely under her again, and resolved not to listen to any more of this shape-changer’s lies. Up she looked, drawing back her hand to strike―  
  
Seeing the shape-changer’s form, she staggered back in horror. His eyes shone like a flame, and even his long hair was the color of a dying ember. His armor was light, but he carried a long sword, and looked as though he would have no difficulty wielding it.  
  
She had heard of a shape-changer who ever took a form like an elf’s― who loved fire, and loved metalwork, and would never do anything as wasteful as killing a prisoner. Before today she had never had the misfortune of meeting him, or even of seeing him.  
  
But this was Sauron. Eirien was sure of it.  
  
Eirien stumbled back. Against such a powerful foe she knew she could not do anything. But perhaps there would be a hole in the rock that had not been there the night before. Perhaps she would escape, and Sauron would not think her worth chasing.  
  
Her foot caught on a small clod of dirt, and she fell to the ground. She tried to get back on her feet, but with every attempt her trembling limbs slipped out from beneath her. In time she found herself curling into a ball, covering her face with her arms and waiting for the worst.  
  
From her left she heard a thud, and a clanking of metal. Sauron had dropped his pack upon the ground, and now sat down beside it quite awkwardly, his gambeson puffing out from beneath his more rigid outer armor. His long arms and legs stuck out like a spider’s as he arranged himself, then pulled a full waterskin out of the pack. “I have more than enough for both of us,” he said, quite casually. “And I will drink from it before you do, if you like, to prove there is nothing harmful in here.”  
  
Eirien had not had anything to drink since leaving the mines. Her head felt swollen and hot, as did her fingers. She could not even feel her hunger anymore. She squinted at the stranger, and at the waterskin in his hand. It was his left hand; not the hand most would use to drink. “That would be good,” she said weakly, her tongue sticking to the back of her teeth.  
  
He opened the bottle without even using his other hand, holding it steady between his third and fourth fingers and his palm, while twisting the lid off with his thumb and first finger. He drank nearly half of it in a single long draught, then replaced the lid and held the waterskin out to Eirien.  
  
She reached out her hand to take it, but snatched it back again. All this proved was that the water contained no swiftly-acting poison that could harm a shape-changer’s form. And this exercise might have been completely in vain, for a shape-changer could simply change a poisoned stomach out for a good one, and the water have poison in it after all. Eirien might have cried if she had been able to do it. “I…” she said, trying desperately to think of an excuse. “I will drink it later.”  
  
“If you like,” he said, and put the waterskin back into his pack. It was so easy to forget that he was not an elf. It was to be expected that he looked just like an elf, but he acted terribly like an elf to a degree that Eirien could not have expected. She wished he would stop. Anything else might have been preferable to this ridiculous lie.  
  
He just sat there, in the middle of the cave, doing nothing in particular. He did not look at Eirien, instead looking to the entrance, or looking at his pack, or looking at his own boots.  
  
Eirien looked over her arms at him. There was a large, curious scar along the right side of his face, which even went up into his hair and down onto his throat. It might have been from a badly-infected claw wound, or else from a bad burn.  
  
He reached up to smooth a loose lock of hair away from his face, again with his left hand. He seemed to use his left hand for everything. Eirien looked for his right hand. Perhaps it was occupied holding some dreadful device, or perhaps he had injured it beyond current usefulness, which would disprove her theory about shape-changers being able to simply change away their injuries.  
  
But, Eirien discovered, he appeared to not have a right hand at all. His arm looked as though it simply ended, and the end of his gambeson’s sleeve had been sewn neatly shut.  
  
She looked at the end of his arm for some time before really allowing herself to believe what she was seeing. It might have been a trick of the lack of light, or else a poorly chosen glove. But believe she did, and it was so unexpected that she uncurled a little.  
  
Perhaps, Eirien began to think, he was not Sauron after all. For all who had met Sauron said that he was excessively strange and vain, and only took the most symmetrical of the prisoners for his servants. How much more, then, would his own form be symmetrical?  
  
The longer Eirien looked at the elf the more she remembered, and the more she became convinced that this could not be Sauron. Even if his eyes glowed he did not have nearly enough of them (for it was said that Sauron always had at least five), and more than half of his face was marked from the sun.  
  
But if he was not Sauron, whyever would he be out here? Was he merely another, less fastidious shape-changer? Or was he an elf in truth?  
  
She began to feel a little more hopeful. There was a chance, however small, that this was not a servant of evil. “Who are you?” she asked before she could think better of it.  
  
“I am called Maedhros,” he said. “I am the keeper of a fortress some distance south of here.” He paused. “I saw your fire, and thought that the one who built it might prefer to spend the winter among other elves instead of out on the plains.”  
  
“I have never heard of you,” said Eirien. “And if your fortress is so near to here that you could see my fire, I think I would have.”  
  
He leaned back silently, looking off into what would have been the distance if they had been aboveground. “I gather, from others who have escaped, that they do all that they can to keep you from knowing of us,” he said at last. “Which is a great deal. For if all the elves trapped in Morgoth’s caves knew how near they were to a place of refuge, they would be far more likely to try to escape.”  
  
Some of the initial thrill of thinking she might have been wrong had already worn off, and Eirien began again to be suspicious of how easily he spoke, and how easily he could come up with sensible reasons for the Enemy’s actions. But she was dreadfully weary, and had not had any water for a long time, and had close to no chance of actually being able to escape if this elf was a liar after all.  
  
“Would the elves at your fortress be able to get these off?” she asked, holding out one bony wrist.  
  
“Very probably, if they are of orcish make,” he said. “In this light I cannot see them very well, but I do know the sort of stuff that comes out of that place. Breaking them apart will be rather simple.”  
  
He seemed to know a great deal more about the mines than seemed reasonable for someone who lived out in the free air. “Do many elves escape to your fortress?” asked Eirien. She stood up as she said this, although she still needed to lean on the cave’s wall a great deal.  
  
“Not as many as I would like,” he said gravely. But then he smiled a little, conspiratorially, and said, “But far more, I am sure, than our enemy likes! And though I will not compel you to come, my people would be glad to have you come and join us. We have much food and much water, and whatever possessions of which you might have need are laid up in store for those who make it out.”  
  
He might have been lying. He might have been telling the truth. Eirien had no way at all to know.  
  
But this was why she had tried to get out, wasn’t it? A chance at a free life. And the alternative to going with him, even if she were certain he was evil, would be getting inevitably captured by somebody else.  
  
“I will go,” she said.  
  


They walked back to Himring. By the girl’s appearance and mannerisms she had spent most of her life in the depths of Morgoth’s realm, and would not know how to ride a horse. It would be callous for Maedhros to ride and leave her to walk, and given the sorry state of her clothes it would be greatly improper for them both to ride at once. So they walked, and Hiswalimben walked restlessly beside them. There was time enough in the day that they would be back inside the fortress walls before the sun had fully set.  
  
The air had grown colder since the early morning, and the girl— he very much wished that he had thought to ask her name— was so small as to be affected much more than he. He had lent her his cloak, which seemed to have quelled most of her shivers, but still he wished that this had happened earlier in the year, or else that the northern winds were less cruel.  
  
At least she had agreed to drink some water. She still held the waterskin, taking the smallest of sips every twenty paces. By the time they returned from the fortress, if she had not suffered any ill effects, perhaps she could try to drink a bit of whatever broth had been used in the day’s supper.  
  
For the rest of the day they walked, stopping only when necessary and never for very long.  
  
Just as the sky was beginning to turn orange, they saw Himring peeking out from behind the mountains. From this distance it nearly looked like a mountain itself, but the brilliant red banners flying from the ramparts would show even the most unfocused eye otherwise.  
  
Maedhros had been avoiding looking the girl too directly in her eyes, for she had seemed to become agitated when she saw him earlier in the cave. Still he looked out of the corner of his eye to see her reaction to seeing the fortress.  
  
Her eyes grew as large as they possibly could, and her pace quickened so much that Maedhros dropped behind her momentarily. When they reached the ramp she broke into a run, bundling the cloak up above her knees to avoid tripping on it. Maedhros did not run, only walking briskly behind with Hiswalimben.  
  
At last they both arrived at the gate. Maedhros called up to the gatekeeper with the day’s password, and the gate began to open.  
  
Through the gate they could see into the interior of the western wall, and hear all the noise and activity of the changing of the guard. Although half of the night guard had already taken its place along the wall, the other half was still waiting for the day guard to leave, and the day and night marshals were still conferring about what weather was likely to come the next day.  
  
Two of the day guards, who looked to be very new, were standing in the middle of the long hall, leaning on their spears and talking about nothing in particular. Maedhros pulled one of them aside and sent him ahead as a messenger to the healing wards, saying that there was a new escapee from Morgoth’s halls.  
  
The messenger ran on ahead, straight through the central courtyard, but they took a more circuitous route, avoiding the crowds. Farmers’ cattle pulled in great carts of wheat or dried apples for the winter storehouses, and shepherds brought their sheep down into the lamp-lit, fortified caves beneath the western mountains. Himring’s herds of sheep had increased this year more than many years prior, and anyone who braved the possibility of winter’s swift onset long enough to gather forgotten straw from the south or tall brush from the north could demand a high price for it as feed.  
  
The healers’ wards were located near the caves, as were the dwellings reserved for families with children. They could reach the caves quickly if there were to be an emergency, and the doors could be shut tightly— in time of most desperate need, they could be sealed entirely from either side with great piles of stone, and those inside would have to brave the unexplored depths in hope of finding a way of escape.  
  
They arrived at the healers’ wards just as the last vestiges of sunlight faded from the sky, and some time after the messenger had arrived. Already a room had been prepared for the girl, its eastern window veiled with more than a dozen gauzy curtains, such that the room’s occupant could decide exactly how much light she wanted at each time of day. None of the rooms had direct access to a fireplace; rather, there were fireplaces between each room and the next, which were tended from the hallway by the healers’ apprentices, so that they could warm each room through the walls. In the room several simple grey wool dresses of various sizes would have been laid out, as well as all such things as would be worn with them.  
  
One of the healers, as well as her apprentice, stood by the door. “Hello,” said the healer to the girl. “I am one of the healers; we care for this building, and for those who live within it. You may remain here for as long as you like.”  
  
“And right now,” said the apprentice, “I will show you everything in the room, and if you want to know what to do with it I can tell you!”  
  
“Yes,” said the healer, smiling a little. “That sounds excellent.” Then she looked at Maedhros, and asked, “Would you mind coming and answering all the usual questions? Only if there is nothing more pressing, of course.”  
  
“I will come,” he said, and when the healer turned to leave he followed her, leaving the apprentice and the girl to go into the room.  
  
As he walked down the hallway with the healer, he heard the apprentice ask cheerily, “My name is Tírawen! What is yours?”  
  
“Eirien,” murmured the girl.  
  
The main record-keeping room was only a short distance away, one flight of stairs up from the ground floor. It was reached by a different flight of stairs than all the other aboveground rooms were; this flight of stairs was hidden by a door, to which only the healers and select apprentices had keys.  
  
They climbed the stairs quickly, and soon arrived at the record-keeping room. An apprentice was already in the room, deeply in study of what must have been every collection of medicinal flower sketches in the fortress.  
  
The healer went to a table that was slightly less covered in paper than the others, and sat down on one of the chairs beside it. “Ah,” she said, seemingly more to herself than to anyone else, “there are still some forms here. Good.” She picked up one of these forms and gave it to Maedhros.  
  
Maedhros sat at one of the chairs, placing the form on the table, and moving the inkwell that was already on the table from his right side to his left. He began writing, filling in the answer to each question on the list. _Is the escapee elven, human, or dwarven? Does the escapee have and remember a name? If so, what is it?_  
  
As he wrote, the healer idly looked through a few old papers, her eyes the slightest bit unfocused. "If you do not know the answer to one of the questions, please leave it blank until the escapee can be safely asked," she said absentmindedly, from behind the papers.  
  
He put down his quill and looked at her.  
  
She shook her head, blinking her eyes. “Well,” she said, “of course you know that, what with how many times you have been here! Most of the guards who come through here do not. I have to say it quite early, so that they do not start guessing. It takes a dreadfully long time to scrape their guesses off the paper so we can put the right answers in their proper place.”  
  
“Have there been any other escapes recently?” he asked, still writing. _Where was the escapee found? Does the escapee have any known injuries? Did the escapee bring anything out? If so, what?  
_  
“Not since the three in spring,” said the healer. “And of course there will not be any until next spring.” She paused, then said, “It is very good that you found this girl today. Even if she had managed to remain hidden, I do not like to think of what would have happened when the snows came.”  
  
“It is not a fate I would wish on any elf,” Maedhros said quietly. He did not bother to look at the back of the form. He knew what questions were written there, and he knew that he did not know the answers. Very probably nobody other than Eirien herself would know the answers for some time; it was not wise to ask prying questions right after the escape.  
  
“Need I do anything else?” he asked. The healer answered in the negative, so Maedhros left the healing wards, making his way toward the entrance to the caves. Rest could wait until after he spoke with the shepherds.  
  


This was too good to be true.  
  
Eirien’s room seemed to be as opulent as a queen’s. Everything was clean and warm, and she had a small window. The glass panes were small and square, marked in their center with thick bullseyes, but still she could look through it and see all the people of the fortress going about their business. The light of their lamps and torches reflected into her room like a pattern, covering every wall in golden-red flowers.  
  
There were too many people here for it all to be a lie. Nearly everybody looked happy— the girl from earlier had seemed especially so, even if Eirien could not remember her name. The grass and the stones all felt as real as anything she had felt before leaving the cave, and the broth she had been given tasted better than anything she had ever eaten before.  
  
To know in her mind that she was safe was one thing, but to convince the deepest part of her spirit of it was another. She did not rest well that night, waking up in fright at every little noise.  
  
But when the sun rose, she was awake to see its light peeking through the curtains. She dressed herself quickly in her new clothes. The dress was warm and soft, and its long, snug sleeves felt almost like armor.  
  
As soon as she was dressed, she pulled aside the curtains from the window, unfastened its latch, and opened it. The cold outdoor air flowed in, bringing with it the pale light of morning.  
  
The morning cold did not chill her to her heart as it had the day before. It was refreshing, like water after much work.  
  
And Eirien thought, as she looked up at the shining blue sky, that everything about that day would be good.

**Author's Note:**

> If I have constructed the non-canon names for this fic correctly, Hiswalimben should mean something along the lines of _fast, grey one_ (feminine form) in Quenya. Eirien should mean _daisy_ in Sindarin, and Tírawen should mean something like _sight-maiden_ in Sindarin. If you notice something off, I’d be happy to consider any suggestions on how to improve the grammatical validity of any of the non-canon names used here!
> 
> Sulfur is common in British iron deposits (and in some volcanic regions such as Yellowstone in the northern United States). Sulfur-contaminated iron deposits, when processed using historical British techniques, usually produced very brittle metal. Burrs are a common defect in sand-mold metal casting.
> 
> I imagine the sheep of Himring to be a breed similar to Shetland sheep, which retain strong survival instincts and are prized for their ability to thrive on land that would otherwise be agriculturally useless. 
> 
> The caves beneath the mountains are a bit inspired by Helm’s Deep, although they are much less pretty, and were devised as a way for Himring to have a large sheep population, be able to keep all of the people and animals inside during winter and times of war, and not take up a lot of what could have been grazing land.
> 
> Possibly my depiction of Himring as having things as frivolous as glass windows and delicate curtains will be considered a little weird. But I am of the opinion that the elven standard of living during the Long Peace was generally pretty good, and luxuries such as the ones in this story would certainly be afforded to places like the healing wards, where the comfort of patients would be a top priority to speed healing.


End file.
